The distinguishing feature of the discipline which this Society has advocated for Penitentiaries, is that which the world misrepresents by denominating it solitary confinement, and which it discredits by arguments founded not on past experience, but resting upon the probable effects upon the minds of the prisoners of total solitude and utter separation from association, sight and converse with man. We do not pretend to say what would be the effect of such a condition. Our object is not the condemnation of an untried system, but the exposition of the benefits of that which has been well tested. The amelioration not the augmentation of prison discipline is the object of our Association. The permanent benefit of society through the improvement of individuals, or the eternal benefit of individuals, by making the prison a school of reform rather than a place of torture. Separate confinement is the object that has been proposed—and wherever obtained, it has produced, if not all the good which had been hoped for, at least more than any other system that has been adopted, and has satisfied those who are engaged officially or voluntarily in its administration, that its benefits are progressive. By the separation of the convict from his fellow criminals, he is taken from the concerted plans and practices of crime, and placed where none may approach him but officers charged with the care of his person, or those who visit his cell with messages of kindness. People who, sensible of his guilt, but hopeful of his reformation, approach him in a spirit of kindness, and, satisfying him that they seek his good, and not their own benefit, gain admittance to his heart, win his confidence, and produce, perhaps, solemn resolutions to amend. He sees, in the narrow confines of his cell, and he feels, in the strictness of the discipline to which he is subjected, the terrors of the violated law. But he comprehends, in the oft-repeated lessons of love that are given to him by the Society’s visitors, that, prone as he is to crime, he is the object of human solicitude and the subject of divine mercy. And in time he understands also, that, had he been released with the first resolution to repent, he would have missed of reform. He comprehends that time and retirement were necessary to the germination of the seeds which had been planted in his heart, and a long season of abstraction from society could alone have matured the fruits of repentance. Solitude—entire solitude—might have embittered his heart against the social compact by which he was suffering. He may have had learning, but he probably lacked that moral education, that culture of the heart, by which he could easily discern the rightful dependence of punishment on crime, or his responsibility to society for the talents he possessed, and the uses to which he applied them. In utter loneliness, he would have brooded over his privations, and, recalling the hundreds whom he knew equally guilty, but wholly unpunished, he would have regarded his condition as of special, unequalled, and gross injustice, and might have sought liberty and life to revenge himself on man; or, wearying of existence, and despairing of relief, he would have “cursed God and died.” Utter solitude to the ignorant and the bad is rarely productive of benefit. Solitude may be the occasion and the means of beneficial progress to the good. It may enable the repentant to avoid the errors which have injured him and by which he has injured others, and it may enable him to work out his own benefit, doing good to himself, but not communicating it to others. The whirlwind of passion disturbs the solitude, but God and good are not in the disturber. The small still voice of reason and revelation calls him to repentance, but he cannot understand. Like the child Samuel, he hears the call, but until there be some one to instruct him how to respond, he remains in his darkness, unimproved.

But solitary confinement we have said is not recommended by the Society. That species of penalty might be as cruel to the convict as the associated imprisonment is unjust to society. We would have all penalties so tempered with mercy, that they should lead naturally and certainly to improvement. We condemn any sentence to utter solitude, as heartily as we do that to a social imprisonment, whereby pecuniary compensation to the State takes the place of moral improvement in the prisoner, and where day by day former associates in vice become schemers for future depredations and teachers of the means of crime to the neophyte in wrong doing.

The separate confinement which constitutes the peculiar character of prison discipline advocated by the Society and practised in the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, has reference to the separation of one convict from another, and of separation of the criminal from that intercourse with people from without that might keep up his relation with criminals and his taste and his resolutions for crime. Day by day the lesson of moral instruction is heard. Day by day the visitors from the city present themselves at his cell, and invite him to reformation; and at any stated period, or in case of special emergency, the inmate of the cell may have the attendance of a clergyman of his own choice, and the consolations of religious instruction such as he may have cherished in better times. His solitude is disturbed by the regular visitation of the officers of the prison, and the silence of his cell broken by the prayers and teaching of his visitors. Nor is it a violation of the plan, that he should repeat and amplify what he has heard, and loudly express what he has been brought to feel. This, with all the privations which imprisonment and conviction for extensive crime necessarily include, is not “solitary confinement.” The justice which, for the sake of society, restrains the freedom of the offender, yields entirely to the mercy that turns to that offender’s temporal and eternal good. This infliction, that separates him from his associates in felony, frees society from apprehension of his crimes.

We speak here of the infliction of the Penitentiary. The case of a convict in the County prison has in it much less of severity, and is proportionately therewith of less benefit to him and less advantageous to society.

We do not intend to argue upon the advantages of separate confinement and labor, over the associated condition of prisoners. That subject has been often presented in our annual reports, and in essays published by the Society, and ably and satisfactorily handled. We shall present some of what may be regarded as the minor objects and labors of the Society, from which, however, great good has already resulted, and to which we must look for many of the direct, personal, and permanent benefits which are to result from our efforts.

It will be seen, in the course of this report, that close observation warrants the conclusion that little hope of improving the moral condition of the prisoner can be indulged until he is placed within the reach of separate instruction, and beyond the evils of companionship with the vicious. This is the experience in this State; this is the growing opinion in Great Britain and Ireland.